


River Song Has Been Saved

by ShadowsOffense



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s04e08 Silence in the Library, F/M, Gen, Light Angst, Not A Fix-It, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 04:58:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsOffense/pseuds/ShadowsOffense
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor saves River, River saves the Doctor.  It is choice just as much as fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	River Song Has Been Saved

He hates himself every time he saves her. Just a little bit. Because, maybe, if he fails her once, just _once_ , she wouldn’t have such faith in him. She wouldn’t waltz into the Library and brush off the danger and his warnings because he is there and he always, always catches her when she falls. He wants so badly to fail her, because every time he doesn’t he knows he is slowly building up the faith and the trust that will lead her to her death. He tells her, when he is young-ish, _I won’t always be there to catch you when you fall_ , but, by then, he has already saved her too many times for her to listen; the River he told was much further along in their timeline than he was. 

And, really, in the end he can’t help himself, because not saving her is never an option. She throws herself off buildings and into space and he can’t just let her _die_ , after all. But saving her brings grief and pain and anger because, at first, all he can think about is how being there for her _this_ time is how he looses her _that_ time. And it hurts her, seeing him react to her faith in him with such awful emotions when she so obviously loves him so much; he is not blind, just scared and maybe a little bit in love too and trying to out run what will be. Save them both from the future he knows is coming. But he hates himself even more when he hurts her after he saves her, wounding even as he protects; it’s not _her_ fault after all. So he learns to hide that little flash of self loathing, learns how to not turn it outward on her, because she doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t _know_. 

And when it is a younger her that he encounters, a her whose faith in him is more easily shaken, rocked by smaller failings, he finds that just because he is _able_ to let her down, doesn’t mean he _can_. Melody, when she is still becoming River, needs, more than anything, for someone to have faith in her, the core of her, and to be able to count on them in return. Who she might become if he betrays that terrifies him, because there is so much that is good and beautiful in her and it could be so easily snuffed out in the early days of her timestream. He loves her so much; he can’t let her not be the magnificent, wonderful person she can be. He can’t be the one to crush that part of her, the best and brightest part, not after she managed to hang onto it despite the Silence and their programming. He can’t kill her before she gets started, even if it means her body might go on living past the Library. Because it would be as someone else, someone _darker_. Melody, his River Song, will never be lost to Silence. Never. When River is young-ish he saves her even when she doesn’t need it, even though it makes him ache, because if anyone knows how dangerous the darkness inside the hearts of a Timelord is, it’s him. He’s seen who she chooses to be and she’s glorious, but who she could have been... he will not undermine her, force her to turn into something terrible just because loosing her hurts. He promised her, not one line. And it does still hurt him, when he saves her all those early times, all those _extra_ times, but he can’t bring himself to regret it. The wonder he can see on her face then, when he comes for her, to run beside her when she expects to have to stand and fall alone, is almost enough to drown the pain he feels completely. 

In the end, she was always his to save.

Just as he was hers.


End file.
